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He was simultaneously opening new restaurants: after Pò (which he no longer co-owns) came seven others--plus a bar and a wine shop--that have all succeeded, with one exception. Batali routinely mocks the fustian techniques of French cooking, so it seemed quite a leap last year for him and Bastianich to launch Bistro du Vent, a French restaurant on 42nd Street. The food isn't quite French and isn't quite Batali. Struggling for an identity, Bistro du Vent is the first Batali-Bastianich venture where you can easily get a seat. Both men seem to sigh heavily whenever the name of the place is mentioned.
Their six other restaurants are flourishing; Bastianich estimates that they collectively serve 2,000 people a night. Last year the James Beard Foundation named Batali its Outstanding Chef--the top award a U.S. cook can win. This year the foundation has nominated Molto Italiano, Batali's 2005 book, as best international cookbook and Del Posto as best new restaurant. The winners will be announced at a Manhattan gala on May 8, a few days after Batali returns from cooking chicken thighs and tortilla casserole for scores of NASCAR drivers, crewmen, and their families at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Ala.
When Batali delivered the commencement address last year at Rutgers, he urged the graduates to "get a brand," which he defined as "your own truth, expressed consistently." "For better or worse, I've got a brand," he said in the speech. "The orange clogs, the ponytail, the attitude, my seeming fluency in Italian--it's instantly recognizable. But what matters to me is, it's not fake." O.K., but the challenge he now faces is not to misjudge how far you can stretch your brand without cheapening it. In the '90s, because of his Manhattan restaurants, Batali vaulted into the small coterie of cooks who were seen as fine artists rather than mere craftsmen. His brand seemed to be quality, a refined ristorante simplicity. But as he hawks his line of pork sausages to NASCAR fans, one already senses the distress of his original aficionados. Do you order a $30 squab from the NASCAR chef? Cautionary tales lurk in every corner of the food world: remember Rocco DiSpirito of NBC's The Restaurant? Both the show and the eatery, Rocco's 22nd Street, are gone. Wolfgang Puck doubtless earns millions from ventures like his little plastic-wrapped, refrigerated sandwiches sold at the airport. But eating in one of his retro-glitzy sit-down restaurants is now as much an act of irony as gastronomy.
Food is fad--it's gone the second we swallow it--and one day Batali's restaurants will seem musty and trite. But at least for now, Batali--partly because he is a man of catholic, unquenchable appetites--seems to know exactly what our overfed country is hungry for. (It's also not terribly surprising that a country where nearly two-thirds of adults are overweight venerates a large guy as a cooking icon.) Buford notes that Batali once flirted with an apposite motto: "Wretched excess is just barely enough."